Expect Biden to parrot conservative pro-Israel writers in the New York Times who hail the lately-fallen Israeli government as a model for the United States in its inclusion of an Arab party. Shmuel Rosner calls it “thrilling.” Too bad that NPR also salutes the “hell of an experiment.” All these positive reviews leave out Israeli apartheid.
Polling by Huwaida Arraf, a Democratic House candidate in Michigan, shows that her position of cutting off aid to Israel is not unpopular. “Palestine is a political positive…Attitudes toward military aid to Israel undermine claims by AIPAC that strong support for Israel is ‘good politics… [S]ix in ten (60%) voters under 45 want aid to Israel reduced or ended,” a memo to donors asserts.
A new poll shows that young Democrats want the U.S. to lean toward Palestine not Israel by nearly three-to-one. Yet the family of Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian American journalist killed by Israel, wrote to Biden today that the “United States has been skulking toward the erasure of any wrongdoing by Israeli forces…. It is as if you expect the world and us to now just move on…”
After the State Department tries to sweep journalist Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing under the rug ahead of Biden’s visit to Israel by saying it can tell nothing from the bullet, her family dismisses the statement as “CSI-style forensics” designed to reach the “political” conclusion that an Israeli soldier did not intentionally target her, but was going after terrorists. Meanwhile the Israelis refuse to release evidence and demand a complete whitewash.
I am such an optimist: for the last year I have been saying that Unilever won’t dare overrule the decision by its subsidiary, Ben & Jerry’s, to stop selling ice cream in the occupied territories. No, progressives are winning this debate. And boy was I wrong!
We are determined to keep talking about Palestine in the United States. Talking about Shireen Abu Akleh, Yasser Murtaja, and many other less prominent people who are killed or see their homes destroyed. And talking about the American foreign policy that is colluding with the Israelis to cover up Shireen’s killing.
The reason I won’t join up with J Street is that it cannot face two fundamental truths: There will never be a two state solution. There is apartheid in the occupied territories and that extends to Israel. J Street is incapable of acknowledging these realities because it is sworn to the idea of a Jewish state, and these realities obliterate that fantasy. Countless human rights organizations and people of conscience have said it’s apartheid– the humiliation and brutalization of people based on non-Jewish ethnicity. J Street’s leadership is D.C. establishment, but its rank and file know this.
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Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey says attacks by progressives like IfNotNow on politicians for supporting Israel are causing those colleagues to “lay low” rather than speak up for Israel’s actions. “The issue I worry about more than anything is that some of my colleagues when I call them now to join on something, they’ll say, Listen Josh, You know I’m with you, you know I’m going to vote with you. I always stand by Israel. But you know I just don’t feel like getting beaten up. I get beaten up so much when I come out in support. So I’m just going to lay low, if you don’t mind. I’ll be there for the vote, but I don’t want to sign the letter. I don’t want to speak out publicly.”
An NPR report on Israel’s killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist, makes clear that Israel is withholding information from the public 6 weeks later. “The army declined to answer NPR’s questions about what the suspected soldier told investigators, what orders soldiers were given, and what footage the army has of the incident.”